After months of exterior work, Rob and the team are making progress indoors, and I am beginning to think of the house as a home instead of a project. We are doing wooden cabinetry to match the vintage feeling of the slate sink that Chris found. Rob, a master carpenter, will build the cabinets to match this photo from Ellen's archives. He'll build them out of aged wood: 80 yr old fir reclaimed from beams in an old aircraft hangar. "Reclaiming old wood makes for a truly green renovation," says Rob. "Plus, aged wood is more beautiful. It takes 50 years to get fir this color."

"We cut vertically, for vertical grain on the doors. In the panels, we'll do flat grain, for interest," says Rob.

While I'm upstairs consulting with the painter, Donald's sets up a makeshift office in the large, well-lit room off the kitchen, what will be the breakfast room, formerly used as the laundry. A window has been cut into the west porch-facing wall, for added light and a view of the lake. A vintage slate sink found by Chris Brennan sits propped on the floor until cabinets are built to accommodate it.

who we are

We are a couple of Upper West Siders from NYC who never set out to buy an old mansion in Connecticut. But the moment we walked through its massive front door, we were smitten. The info on this site is earnestly cobbled from a variety of sources, including the web. Please let us know if we've gotten something wrong, or if there's a story about Holleywood you'd like to share.